A couple more funny teaching anecdotes to relate:
1) Here’s a conversation I had with one of our Chinese secretaries yesterday:
Me (between classes, after seeing a student’s badminton racquet sticking out of his bag): “Oh, badminton. I like badminton. Do you like badminton?”
Chinese secretary: “No, I don’t like badminton. I don’t like exercising.”
Me: “Oh, I do. Last year, in Ecuador, I lost about 10 kilograms.”
CS: “Really? That’s a lot of weight to lose from badminton!”
Me: “No, no, not from badminton. Just from being in a different place and eating better food.”
CS: “Wow. No, I don’t like badminton.”
2) Jill assigned a journal topic to one of her classes of teenagers that read: “If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?”
The first line of one of her students’ journals was: “I want the alive person.”